The worrywarts seek a parallel to today's market and think they see it in 1930: credit crunch, rising unemployment, financial institutions in trouble. So we must be in for a ferocious bear market. I seek a parallel and find it only ten years ago. And that makes me bullish.

Early 1998 saw financial crises eerily similar to today's and a lot of hand-wringing about institutions collapsing and setting off a domino chain of other collapses. But guess what? The S&P 500 was up 28% that year.

Early January 1998 saw stocks implode on news of the late-stage aftermath of the so-called Asian Contagion. Currencies and then debt markets started disintegrating in Asia, and that should supposedly have brought the world economy down. The parallel today is the American subprime contagion. Back then the dollar was strong, U.S. stocks led foreign, and technology led on the upside and the downside. Now it is a weak dollar, foreign stocks lead and emerging markets dominate instead of tech.

This year January started rough. So what? Despite folklore, history shows January market movements foretell nothing about the rest of the year.

In early 1997 this column started saying that all you needed to beat the S&P 500 was to own any half of its very largest stocks. That worked for 30 months. My definition of large was a stock whose market capitalization was greater than the weighted average of the index. (This sounds convoluted, but it's mathematically simple: Take every market cap, square it, sum the results and then divide that sum by the combined market cap of all the stocks.) Then, the weighted average market cap of the 500 stocks was $55 billion, and 30 stocks topped that, ranging from General Electric
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Nowadays my hunting ground is the whole world, where there are 24,000 stocks to choose from. The weighted average market cap of the MSCI World Index is $81 billion. In one of the stranger coincidences in finance there happen to be 81 companies whose market caps exceed that $81 billion figure. This is where you should concentrate your money. After all, we just started the final leg of a seven- or eight-year bull market (beginning in late 2002), and final legs of bull markets are dominated by big stocks.

In 1997 credit spreads had started widening as everyone feared Asia's finances and its low-quality debt. The result was that the biggest, safest firms were disproportionately allocated credit and lower-quality borrowers were cut off. We're seeing a replay now. Last summer junk borrowers were squeezed out of the market, especially the commercial paper market. General Electric and ExxonMobil
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With big stocks continuing strong and weak ones getting squeezed we could see a bifurcated market in 2008. Don't be surprised if the biggest stocks do well while indexes of small stocks like the Russell 2000 do badly. This contrast will drive technical analysts nuts because they are trained to hate markets where there are more decliners than gainers. Ignore the technical analysts. Here are five huge, good stocks.

France's Sanofi-Aventis
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) (40, SNY) is a leader in drugs to treat ailments including cancer and diabetes and those involving the heart and the nervous system. No single drug makes or breaks it, and sales have been roughly in proportion to global gross domestic product. Quality growth at 12 times 2008 earnings is tough to beat.

With 50 million customers, 55% of its market and effective Japanese protectionism behind it, NTT Docomo (16, DCM)also licenses its wireless technology outside Japan. The stock has lagged for years; it now sells at 1.6 times annual revenue and 14 times likely earnings for the fiscal year ending March 2008.

Chevron
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) (84, CVX)operates in all segments of the oil business and all across the world. The market isn't expecting much from this $197 billion megacap, since it is priced at only 90% of revenue and nine times trailing earnings. You can expect a lot, including a 2.7% dividend yield.

Soda-and-snack vendor PepsiCo
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) (68, PEP)will survive a weakening economy. Alternatively, it will do well in a strengthening economy. Great brand names like Frito-Lay and Gatorade, with stable growth at marketlike valuations, make Pepsi easy even for the fearful.

IBM (107, IBM)doesn't grow much, because the competition is endless. But this is one of the world's highest-quality companies, with very stable earnings that the market doesn't think very much of. It costs 12 times expected 2008 earnings and 1.6 times sales.

Money manager Ken Fisher's latest book is The Only Three Questions That Count (John Wiley, 2007). Visit his homepage at www.forbes.com/fisher.